The Wire: the book

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Season four, episode eight

Aidan Gillen as Carcetti, Delaney Williams as Landsman, Sonja Sohn as Kima and Clarke Peters as Freamon in The Wire. Photograph: public domain

"How for real are you?" Lieutenant Daniels asks Carcetti at the meeting where he is anointed colonel by the mayor. Being "for real" may be a ghetto phrase, beloved of rappers eager to show they have not deserted the street, but it is a question that should probably be asked of every politician. Significantly, given what we know will happen in series five, it never gets a direct answer from the rookie mayor. "Well, I guess we're gonna find that out together," he says instead.

If Daniels were to look back on this exchange he would probably give it one of those wry smiles which he made into an art form. At this point Carcetti is still the new, blue-eyed boy come to shake up the political system, with the run for governor that will eventually change his priorities still a distant thought.

The mayor is driven to act after he is treated to an unedifying spectacle of low-level street rips as he accompanies officers to see the reality of policing - "That's two," an officer proudly informs him after the heavy handed arrests of two non-players.

Carcetti's introduction to "real" police work includes one of the funnier scenes of an overridingly bleak series, when the mayor, imploring the homicide detectives to act normally, prompts Jay to pull out a porno, Freamon to go to work on his models and Kima to slouch in her chair.

Carcetti: So this is your day?

Freamon: We catch a body, it's different.

But there are more serious aspects to Carcetti's wake-up call. When the mayor meets Rawls, Burrell's deputy blames affirmative action, a hugely divisive issue in the US in recent years, for the problems on the streets of Baltimore.

Affirmative action is an issue David Simon also tackled in Homicide and it re-emerges in The Wire with the need for a black commissioner to replace Burrell. As so often in The Wire the answer is not black and white and Simon is not about to hand it to us on a plate.

Carcetti's deputy chief of staff, Norm, accuses Rawls of racism, but the mayor believes he is just saying it as he thinks it is. In Homicide, Simon details the often casual racism of detectives while also highlighting a system that does not always lead to the right man getting the job.

This episode heralds the start of the beautiful-while-it-lasts period when Daniels looks like being the antidote, an apolitical, straight-talking, in-his-position-on-merit, black cop. He is "for real", even if we know that, ultimately, it is being "real" that will cost him in a system where cooking the books is more important.

This is also the episode in which Prezbo learns that being "for real" and trying to do the best for his pupils is secondary to the requirement to "teach to the test", to deliver stats in a similar way to the police department.

And the pupils in Bunny Colvin's special programme become animated about the one thing that interests them – being corner boys (or a corner girl in the case of Zenobia). Namond offers Colvin a lesson in morality, pointing out that booze and cigarettes are not much different from illegal drugs, ironic given that the former major was turfed out of the force for his Hamsterdam experiment: "We do the same thing as y'all except when you do it, it's, 'These kids are animals.'"

No doubt: the adults are just political animals.

Running totals

Murders: a New Yorker is shot by Chris for failing to identify the singer of Shake It and Jiggle It, thereby proving that he is from out of town. We see Snoop and Chris disposing of the bodies of another two New Yorkers at the beginning of the programme, although we don't see the hits. So up three to 64.

McNulty giving a fuck when it's not his turn: steady on 30. Drunk: steady on 16. Dubious parenting: steady on seven.

Bunk drunk: he's plastered again at the wake of Colonel Foerster and is disgusted by "mincing" McNulty being on the soft drinks: "Why don't I just suck your dick and get it over with?" Up one to eight. He's catching up with Jimmy.